Andres - Toronto is still pretty safe, although there are a lot more cars broken into lately...and more apartment break-ins too. Whenever poverty rises, so does crime. The streets are still safe...that is my impression. There is such a long tradition of social stability and domestic peacefullness in Canada that it is not likely to change rapidly.

What happened in the last 10 years is that the provincial governments in Canada (particularly in Ontario) got the smart idea of privatizing all kinds of government-funded social programs AND transferring the load of many others from the PROVINCE TO THE LOCAL CITIES AND TOWNS!!! This way, the glorious provincial government was able to get money, reduce its debt (at the expense of the towns and cities), and make lucrative payoffs to its rich friends in the business community (I'm sure with some private deals on the side...mutually beneficial). In other words, they made things LOOK BETTER ON PAPER while actually BEING WORSE IN REALITY. Call it tunnel vision...you only look at one thing and ignore all the rest, while the ship sinks under your feet.

They were also able to REDUCE TAXES (their big campaign promise which got them the vote of the very foolish public)...yeah...they reduced the taxes very slightly, while ROBBING us all bigtime! Our municipalities are out of money, our roads, water systems, hospitals, and schools are in the worst shape in living memory, and the whole social fabric is deteriorating visibly year by year. This, by the way, is part of the ongoing process of making Canada more similar to the USA with every passing day... Everyone wonders how much longer our government-funded medical coverage will last in this country? It is the one thing they have not yet dared to dismantle, although they are chipping away at it in little bits.

Mike Harris, the ex-premier called his conservative program the "common-sense revolution", and he fooled a lot of people. He is the Margaret Thatcher of Canada, has been rich all his life, and has apparently no idea of what he has done to ordinary people and to their communities. He cannot understand why the poor don't "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", not realizing, perhaps, that they HAVE NO BOOTS in the first place!...nor any legal way of getting them.

- LH